Four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka got her 2026 season off to a winning start for Japan in the United Cup after Great Britain’s Emma Raducanu pulled out of their singles clash with a fitness issue, but despite Osaka’s win, GB took the match 2-1 with a deciding mixed doubles victory.<\/p>\n
Osaka<\/a> was too strong for GB reserve and 276th-ranked\u00a0Katie Swan<\/a>, winning 7-6(4), 6-1<\/a> as Raducanu<\/a> watched from the sidelines.<\/p>\n “I’m proud of how I fought,” Osaka said. “I’d never played here, it was tough.”<\/p>\n Billy Harris<\/a>, standing in for the injured Jack Draper<\/a>, began with a 7-6(4), 6-3<\/a> defeat of Shintaro Mochizuki<\/a>.<\/p>\n “It’s great to get the first win, even if there were some shaky bits. I closed it out well at the end,” said Harris.<\/p>\n Great Britain sealed the match when Neal Skupski<\/a> and Olivia Nicholls<\/a> defeated Yasutaka Uchiyama<\/a> and Nao Hibino<\/a> 7-5, 4-6, 10-7<\/a>.<\/p>\n In Sydney, Alexander Zverev<\/a> clinched victory for Germany against the Netherlands as the world number three demolished Tallon Griekspoor<\/a> 7-5, 6-0<\/a>.<\/p>\n Eva Lys<\/a> beat Suzan Lamens<\/a> 6-2, 6-2<\/a> and Germany also took the doubles for a 3-0 sweep.<\/p>\n Playing his first match of 2026, Zverev dropped just seven points in a commanding second set.<\/p>\n “The first set, it was tough to get rhythm,” said Zverev. “Once I got the chances, I did well and I’m very happy with the win.”<\/p>\n The 18-nation mixed-team event in Perth and Sydney is a warm-up for the Australian Open which begins on January 18th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka got her 2026 season off to a winning start for Japan in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-387526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}